


season of the witch

by winterbones



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 03:15:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a series of ficlets featuring a witch Lydia Martin and her very reluctant familiar, Derek Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> somewhat AU, but follows season two on a whole.

“I don’t understand,” Lydia said, probably close to the fifth time.

The old woman looked put out and the feeling was completely mutual. “I don’t understand what’s not to understand.”

Lydia wriggled and the muscles beneath her bottom poked at her. For all that broadness, he was fairly bony. “Try just about everything. _None_ of this makes sense.”

Gnarled hands gestured wildly. “It makes perfect sense!” she snapped.

“Werewolves are running around Beacon Hills, the Argents make a living out of killing them,” here Allison stiffened behind her, “and there are other shapeshifters of the less friendly variety— not that you can get much less friendly than _ripping out my throat_ —oh and witches and I’m one them?”

Smokey eyes blinked. Once. Twice. “Yes,” she said.

“Where’s the part where that makes _any_ sort of sense?” To punctuate her point she slapped a hand across the sweaty back beneath her. Stiles, parked at the cheap wooden table, snorted at the ensuing groan. “I’m still not even sure _what_ happened!”

It was all a hazy blur of reds and oranges and pain all bleeding into one another, Peter Hale standing in the center of the strange glyphs ( _Sumerian_ , she’d been informed by the old woman, _and a healthy dose of enochian though the grammar was poor_ —whatever that meant) and pulling her into the center too, but not with his hands but some force just shoving until she’d been there, kneeling at his side. Then there’d only been fire, and Peter Hale’s face in the fire, and Scott’s shouts and Jackson somewhere passed the wall of flames screaming her name, telling her to _just_ hold on and _oh God, Mccall do something she’s on fire!_

“You reacted,” the old woman said, and the strange, snaking tattoo across the wrinkled side of her face seemed to twist. “It was instinct, your body’s natural self-preservation kicking in. Even if you didn’t know what to do, your body did.”

“I just,” Lydia faltered, “I just reached out. I wasn’t trying to _do_ anything, whatever I did.”

“Name a familiar,” the old woman supplied, not that it made any more sense than it had the first time. “Most witches try to do so; it keeps us tethered. Magic can be so dangerous, so easy to get lost in, familiars help us stay grounded and offer protect and healing when we need it.”

There had been so much pain, like it was eating her from the inside out, scooping out her insides and dumping them on the ground. She had tried to grab the nearest person, the nearest net of safety, and her hands had suddenly been full of leather, full of power, full of rage. “I thought it was Jackson.”

The old woman nodded and glanced at the boy in question, leaned haphazardly against the doorframe. Pink burns popped and blistered as his body healed. “That would have been better,” she agreed, “kanimas are meant to be mastered. Most witches will go out of their way to take one to familiar—your Mr. Argent, for example. Wolves, despite being of the canine variety, generally don’t train well.”

As if to prove her point the body beneath Lydia’s suddenly bucked, a low snarl issuing out. Scott leapt to his feet, ready to intervene, eyes already deepening to a golden yellow, but Lydia slapped a hand against his back.

“Stop that,” she commanded. Blue eyes leveled on her and she huffed, heels digging into the floor like she could hold him. She’d been sitting on Derek Hale—who was pretty much the cause of her woe, thank you very much—since he’d first attempted to leap at the old woman, realizing before Lydia what exactly had just happened. “Look, it’s not my fault, okay? You’re the jerk who tried to kill me in the _first_ place.”

“I’m going to be the jerk who kills you in the _last_ place,” Derek snapped.

“Try it and I’ll flay your furry butt and prove that all dogs don’t go to heaven,” she retorted, even though she wasn’t sure how one exactly flayed, or if she even could—the fire had been more gasoline and Peter Hale’s psycho-ness, than anything Harry Potter.

Derek settled, but only reluctantly. Lydia felt power humming beneath her thighs, like a finely tuned car. Jackson finally seemed to have the energy to stir from his prone position, eyes narrowed. _Oh boy_ , Lydia thought, though hell if she knew why.

“Familiars are not required to like or give anything sort of loyalty to their witch, especially if the bond is forcible formed,” the woman warned her.

“I didn’t _mean_ to do,” Lydia said, a broken record. It had just been Derek’s arm (back when she had thought it had been Jackson’s) and all the power therein, and that had been considerable, and she didn’t know how to explain what happened after that except it had felt like she had been holding a cup of icy water and had simply poured it onto herself, dosing the flames, and suddenly Erica had been plowing into Peter Hale and there had been that hideous snap and Derek Hale had been on the floor like he’d been beamed by tire iron.

“It was a natural reaction, and not uncommon when witches are in duress. And better the Alpha than your human friends, who would have never survived you taking what you needed to bring yourself back from the brink.” The woman’s eerie gray eyes fastened suddenly on Derek. “And should you have a hand in her death, you’ll suffer such a psychic backlash your brain will likely leak out of your ears so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“But Jackson didn’t—” Stiles cut in, glancing at the kanima in question, who lifted uninjured hands in proof.

“Jackson didn’t kill his witch,” the old woman pointed out.

Lydia had heard, seen, and experienced quite enough for just about the next century or so and lowered her hands into her face and released a very low, very angry sound.

“I hope you’re happy,” Derek said, chest expanding with a long, full breath and lifting her up.

“Joy,” Lydia agreed, “is mine.”

“All the same,” the old witch said, “I’d be leery of your familiar. Just because he can’t kill you, doesn’t mean he can’t find someone else who can.”

Oh great, and just about every male not Derek Hale tensed at those words. Lydia lifted her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she grounded out, “I’ll be sure to keep him on a short leash.”


	2. Chapter 2

This strawberry confection of a little too much perfume ( _Victoria’s Secret Noir_ , Stiles had sighed once and Scott had rolled his eyes meaningfully—anytime Scott felt confident in himself enough to roll his eyes was, in Derek’s opinion, a bad thing) and heels sharp enough to poke eyeballs out was fast becoming the bane of Derek’s existence.

Which was no surprise. He couldn’t think of a single Alpha living or dead who had ever allowed themselves to become a witch’s familiar. Witches weren’t exactly the natural enemies of werewolves, but they were far from allies, akin to islands onto themselves, isolated from the whole, pockets of paganism and odes to ancient times (enochian, after all, wasn’t generally taught as a high school language). They were given wide berths by nearly every supernatural creature he could think of and even the supernatural hunters and the few unfortunate betas who had wound up under the thumb of a witch had never met clean ends.

“Stop growling at me,” the bane of his existence snapped.

“Get your feet off my dashboard,” he snarled right back.

“Make me.” And to prove her point she pressed the flat of her foot into the black of his dashboard, leaving a white, streaky smudge.

His hand shot out before he thought better of it, curling none-too-gently around her ankle. There was a trickle of emotions flowing in from their link (the old witch had said there was a way to turn that valve to off, but of course the bitch hadn’t thought to share it with him—something about him trying to rip out her throat. Some people were so touchy) and he got, in no real order, fear, pain, and two words that had him jerking his hand away like it was burning.

 _Peter Hale_.

Shit. His fingers curled until they were white-knuckled over his steering wheel and the small redhead seemed to shrink exponentially into the leather of his passenger seat. No, he didn’t want to know that Peter Hale was still a lingering terror hooking into her skin, or that the flash of his eyes reminded her too much of him. He wasn’t his uncle and no matter how pissed he’d ever gotten, at this situation or life in general, he’d have never sunken so low as to drive a young girl to near insanity for some futile attempt at revenge.

“We have to figure this out,” he said.

“I _have_ this figured out,” Lydia said haughtily. “I pretend this psycho-tastic night never happened, consume four to five Nyquil tablets, and in the morning it will all be like a dream.”

“And if I’m rattling around in your head in the morning?”

She looked aghast. “You are _not_ allowed to be in my head in the morning. That’s when I take _showers_.”

“It’s not like I have a choice.”

“You are Mr. Big Wolf in Charge—”

“Alpha—”

“Whatever.” Her fingers locked together and he didn’t _want_ to know that she was nervous and scared and so very, very lonely but how could he not? “The point is, you are never in a million years going to see me naked.”

“That wasn’t the point, and I don’t want to. See you naked.”

“That’s a lie. _Everyone_ wants to see me naked.”

She _was_ wearing a shirt that dipped into uncharted territory and Derek realized it had been a while, since nakedness had been less supernatural and more just, well, _natural_. Suddenly, he was pretty damned uncomfortable in the car too. And she must have known because her words got all clogged up and she sent him a wide-eyed looked. He recognized it, the kind of glance he got from the deer he occasionally stalked when the night was too dark and his skin too tight.

“Look—” He started. They needed to find some sort of semblance of order in this mess.

“ _My house_ ,” she said, with purpose. “Thanks for the ride. Call me never.”

“Lydia.” Derek leaned over, and this time his grip was far gentler at her wrist. She jolted like it hurt more. “You know, I don’t think we have a choice.”

They both sort of pretended there weren’t tears there, at the edges of her eyes and they both pretended that it was anger that made her press her lips together, and not a Molotov cocktail of grief and fear and unfamiliarity with her own skin.

“I _always_ have a choice,” she snapped, and slammed the door as if to keep the lie trapped in with him.


End file.
